Change Word settings to check spelling

Q: I lost the spell-check feature in English ever since I upgraded to Office 2007 Pro. This was a nice feature I have been using for years. Now, when I use spell-check, all my English words are flagged as misspelled, and it gives me multiple choices with French words. Spell-check works fine with Word 2007.

How can I retrieve the thesaurus? I am neither ready nor willing to write my messages in French. I tried to change the settings to no avail. I use Windows XP Pro, Outlook Express 6, and Office 2007 Pro.

A: My best guess about the cause of your problem is in the default settings in your Word program. When you start a new document in Word, a blank document faces you. Even though there are no words in that document, there are many settings in the master "Normal.dotm" template, which tells Word how your document will look when you start typing.

The default settings do not have the French spelling dictionary as the primary dictionary. The "Normal.dotm" template must have been modified inadvertently. It might have happened in the upgrade process.

There are times when, in exiting Word, you will be asked whether you want to save changes to "Normal.dotm" (in Word 2003 it is "Normal.dot"). If you say yes, then whatever changes were made to the default document will show up each time you begin a new document.

There is an easy fix to your problem. You need to locate "Normal.dotm" on your computer. To do this, right-click on the "Start" button, then click on "Explore." Click on the "Search" button.

Next, click on "All files and folders" and then type "Normal.dotm" in the search window. In the "Look In" menu, click on the arrow at the right and select "Local Disk (c:)." Finally, click the "Search" button.

When you locate the file, right-click on it and select "Open Containing Folder." When you see the file, right-click on it and choose "rename." Change the name to "Normal OLD.dotm."

Don't worry, the next time you run Word, the "Normal.dotm" file will be rebuilt with Word's default settings. This should get rid of the incorrect association to the French dictionary.